Ann Eliza Bleecker (1752–1783)

ALL hail, vernal Phœbus! all hail, ye soft breezes!

Announcing the visit of spring;

How green are the meadows! the air how it pleases!

How gleefully all the birds sing!

Begone, ye rude tempests, nor trouble the ether,

Nor let blushing Flora complain,

While her pencil was tinging the tulip, bad weather

Had blasted the promising gem.

From its verdant unfoldings the timid narcissus

Now shoots out a diffident bud;

Begone ye rude tempests, for sure as it freezes

Ye kill this bright child of the wood:

And peace gives new charms to the bright beaming season;

The groves we now safely explore,

Where murdering banditti, the dark sons of treason,

Were shelter’d and awed as before.

The swain with his oxen proceeds to the valley,

Whose seven years sabbath concludes,

And blesses kind heaven, that Britain’s black ally

Is chased to Canadia’s deep woods.

And Echo no longer is plaintively mourning,

But laughs and is jocund as we;

And the turtle-eyed nymphs, to their cots all returning,

Carve “Washington,” on every tree.

I ’ll wander along by the side of yon fountain,

And drop in its current the line,

To capture the glittering fish that there wanton;

Ah, no! ’t is an evil design.

Sport on, little fishes, your lives are a treasure

Which I can destroy, but not give;

Methinks it ’s at best a malevolent pleasure

To bid a poor being not live.

How lucid the water! its soft undulations

Are changeably ting’d by the light;

It reflects the green banks, and by fair imitations

Presents a new heaven to sight.

The butterfly skims o’er its surface, all gilded

With plumage just dipp’d in rich dies;

But yon infant has seized the poor insect, ah! yield it;

There, see the freed bird how it flies!

But whither am I and my little dog straying?

Too far from our cottage we roam;

The dews are already exhaled; cease your playing,

Come, Daphne, come let us go home.